This invention generally relates to thermal display systems and particularly relates to thermal target display systems for generating thermal radiation patterns simulating infrared signatures of selected target objects.
In the development, testing and evaluation of so-called night vision or thermal imaging sights, such as might form part of a military target acquisition and fire control system, a necessity exists for the provision of a target which displays thermal "signatures" in order to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the performance of the device under test. Such thermal signatures comprise the thermal or infrared radiation patterns of "real-scene" objects such as vehicles, buildings or personnel which the nightvision or thermal imaging sights were designed to detect. Obviously, such nightvision or thermal sighting devices could be tested utilizing the real-scene objects themselves as targets but oftentimes this proves to be too costly and impractical.
It is for this reason that efforts have been made towards the development of test targets which generate thermal radiation patterns simulating the thermal signature of the "real scene" object. For example, thermal test targets have been produced containing a plurality of thermal radiating bars comprised of elements which serve to provide a crude thermal radiation "test" pattern. The thermal radiating patterns of such prior target devices, however, were generally fixed and, as such, separate devices had to be provided for each thermal image to be produced. While these prior devices constituted an improvement over the use of real-scene objects per se in the testing of night vision devices, these fixed-pattern or fixed-display devices still possessed significant short-comings primarily stemming from their inability to provide a dynamically-changing and realistic display. If such a realistic and dynamically changing or variable display could be provided, the requirement for multiple "single-scene" targets would be eliminated and the night vision sight testing process itself would be improved in that the operator of a nightvision device would never know in advance just what thermal object pattern image might be generated on any particular test pass. Objectivity in the field of testing night vision devices would thereby be restored.